


Put Yourself First

by Sharksdontsleep



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Gyms, M/M, fitness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 17:45:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5937253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharksdontsleep/pseuds/Sharksdontsleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Exercise clears his mind - it's his zen, his church, his happy place, except -</p>
<p>'Don't think about it,' he thinks, and thinks, and thinks, trying to push every other thought from his mind. It doesn't work very well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Put Yourself First

**Author's Note:**

> A short follow-up to "I'm Back at Camp with Josh!" 
> 
> No real content notes I can think of other than the fact that there's some discussion of fitness and working out. 
> 
> Feedback greatly appreciated. In my other life, I'm dontsleepsharks on Tumblr and gmail.

For his mid-morning, post-breakfast, pre-lunch power snack, Josh eats an ounce of almonds, a stick of low-fat string cheese, and an orange, and drinks the second of his eight eight-ounce servings of water. He doesn't have clients until the afternoon, so he does his kettlebell set, some cardio, a few of the flexibility exercises he's trying more and more as his 20s become his _late_ 20s. Exercise clears his mind - it's his zen, his church, his happy place, except -

'Don't think about it,' he thinks, and thinks, and thinks, trying to push every other thought from his mind. It doesn't work very well.

From the look on Darryl's face after Josh kissed him, Darryl doesn't know what Josh meant by it. The thing is, Josh doesn't know either.

If his conscious mind is a gym - all neat orderly rows of equipment, everything toweled off and disinfected - his subconscious is littered with thoughts like old mats, discarded water bottles, and broken elastic bands. Try as he might to clear it, he can't. Maybe he should take up yoga. Valencia is, in turns, terrible and terrifying, but he could probably concentrate on his dislike of her long enough to stop focusing on that kiss.

He's an easy-going guy. California boy and all that. He's laid-back, relaxed, whatever; he works really hard at being chill. The chillest. (So he’s maybe not so chill about coasters. Whatever.) 

The point is, he doesn't do these types of mental exercises. He has an eight-pack, a personal record in pull-ups, and a roster of people who all want him to share the secrets of his success. 'Work your ass off and don't eat that,' isn't what people want to hear, so he doesn't say it.

Being the chill guy with great abs involves not saying a lot.

He takes his second shower of the day, a quick rinse-off, trying to clear his head in the steam. He can't. Instead of his normal eight minutes, he spends almost 15 in under the spray, like water could somehow clarify his mind like it would his sinuses. He emerges just beginning to prune, ugh, and with his hair so stripped of product he'll have to use twice as much to hold it in place. This wax isn't cheap, and he's almost out. It's not like West Covina is lower Manhattan, in terms of cost of living, but he works to live and doesn't live to work and money is an object, OK?

He doesn't think about why he decided to kiss Rebecca's boss on the cheek as he was leaving, or the wink he'd given him, or the fact that he'd had a couple of beers and maybe that made him a little more open. (Two beers, if he's honest, on top of enough pate to absorb a half-bottle of tequila, if it'd been that kind of party. Which he's glad it wasn't.)

He towels off, and he's later than he'd like, so he rushes his post-shower lotioning routine and has to pull on his shorts on when his legs are still a little sticky. Ugh again. 

Sunday morning at the gym locker-room is a always quiet, especially the area designated for the trainers, and he hums as he's getting ready, a song he doesn't know the name of, a fragment of music that he can’t seem to shake.

Maybe it's something they played at the party last night, though he doesn't remember anything on - there was the sound of a lot people talking, the clink of glasses (some against Darryl's furniture, because even 'sophisticated' people were sometimes raised in barns), the crunch of crudites. Then the quiet that always follows a good party - the dishwasher burbling and the hum of the bathroom's exhaust fan, Darryl fussing over half-finished bottles of beer and half-eaten plates of food. 

It’d been _nice_ , so nice he’d kissed the host - the 10-years-older-than-him, recently divorced, father of one and grandfather of a snail named Iggy Asnailea - on his way out. Too much of a kiss to really be friendly, but not so much of one to not be friendly either. It must mean something; it must. He’s just not sure what. 

He finishes getting ready, but can't get that song out of his head, a little buh-buh-buh of a thing that he can't seem to finish but can't seem to not sing, either.

His first client, like most of his clients, wants less of a personal trainer in terms of fitness advice, and more of a friend to watch them as they work out and offer encouragements and praise. It's a good enough distraction, though, the rhythms of interval cardio and weight-training familiar, and he circulates from bikes to free weights to mat to machines to bar work, trying to be as present as the moment will allow him to be.

It doesn't work, though. Justine, his client, notices his distraction. "What's that you're humming?" she asks.

"Oh, sorry," he says.

"No worries. I just don't recognize it."

"You know how you hear something and can't place the song? Been stuck in my head all morning."

She's almost done for the day, into cooldown mode, face flushed with exertion, and he sits beside her as she goes into her stretches.

"I have an app on my phone," she says, one leg angled against the other and hands down on the mat.

"Straighten your back a little," he reminds her. She does. "An app for what?"

"It lets you sing something into it, and it'll tell you the song."

"I don't know if that'll work. I'm a pretty bad singer," he says.

She shrugs. "Sounded alright to me."

His next few appointments go quickly, and he tries not to hum or think about kissing Darryl or do anything other than instruct people on how to be their best selves.

He tries to partition his brain, dividing work from his actual thoughts. Greg says he does that when he’s tending bar, thinking about one thing and then doing another. But it doesn't work. Josh isn't really wired that way. 

People expect him to be, though, divided between work and not-work, like somehow being into fitness is less of a valid hobby than model airplanes or Civil War history or whatever. He's been on enough first dates where people's faces kind of fall when he says his main interest in fitness - and this is California - like they'd expected him to be into medieval literature or gardening or some kind of hidden academic.

(Not Darryl, though, some small part of his brain says, while he's wiping down the last piece of equipment for the day. Darryl had been happy, excited even, in talking about his personal pull-up record.)

He doesn’t text Josh or Hector or Chris, or go to the bar and see what Greg’s up to. He considers, for a minute, driving to the beach. Sunday evening is as clear, traffic-wise, as it ever gets in California, and he can probably make it in three hours if he rushes. 

Instead, he settles for sitting on his patio, nursing a protein shake and reading The Rock’s memoir. Or attempting to read it, but his eyes keep sliding off the page, and after rereading the same paragraph three times, he gives up. The sunset is beautiful because Southern California doesn’t mess around, and he might not feel like Josh about West Covina, but he doesn’t mind it here, either.

He still has that song stuck in his head, and so he downloads an app that promises to place it for him, watching as the little circle signifying download status fills in and wishing he had the money for faster Internet.

It doesn’t help, though, because he’s not a great singer or doesn’t know enough of the song, and the app gives him the ‘I’m sorry, please try again,’ screen a bunch of times in what’s probably supposed to be a soothing robot voice before he gives up. 

He’s almost at the storage limit for his phone, and toggles through his apps - mostly fitness stuff, but also Twitter and Insta and a bunch of podcasts he listens to while working out - to see which ones to delete. He pauses with his thumb over Tinder, then switches to Grindr. He could. It’s early yet, and it’s been awhile since he’s gotten laid. His profile pic pretty much guarantees that someone’ll come over. 

He doesn’t, though, just tries to read his book. The Rock is pretty funny, though the part about him eating plain spaghetti and sleeping on a mattress he found in a dumpster is less funny. He’s not sure if The Rock actually wrote the book, or if it’s ghostwritten or how it works, and then kind of kicks himself for assuming that The Rock couldn’t write his own books, because The Rock is awesome and being into lifting doesn’t actually invalidate his brain. 

And it’s like there’s a cartoon lightbulb going off over his head at that moment, because Darryl hadn’t treated him like he was dumb or silly or shallow, but like he was his _friend_ and he hadn’t asked to touch Josh’s abs once and maybe that wasn’t really fair to other people - because when he’s drunk he definitely offers to let people - but it was something. 

Josh had kissed him for it, for being nice and sweet and wanting people to like him so openly. Even in California, where the official sport seemed divided between basketball and oversharing, that was unusual. 

And Darryl had seemed surprised, but he’d smiled, and Josh had smiled and winked, and yeah, he’d like to see if there’s something there. Darryl really isn’t his type, except his type is mostly people who don’t call him back after a few dates, and maybe someone not his type is exactly his type right now. 

Something slots into place in his mind, and he closes his book and grabs his now-empty glass, and goes inside. 

The next day, after his last client is done - this one actually wanted to talk shop for a while, and they ended up swapping power shake recipes - he goes back to his locker to retrieve his phone. There’s a text from an unknown number.

_Hi Josh, its Darryl. Rebecca gvae me ur number. Hope u dont mind. Wanted to see if u wanted to get a drink or something later this week. Friday? Hope ur day went well._

He texts back. _Hi! My day was OK. Better now. Drinks Friday sound great._ He sends an emoji, a little blushing face he hopes communicates what he means.

A minute later, Darryl asks: _whats with the box thing?_

Josh smiles. _Nevermind_ , Josh texts, ignoring when his phone tries to autocorrect it to two words.

_oh my daughter says its an emoji,_ comes the reply followed by a typed-out smiley face - a colon, a dash, a parenthesis. 

_:-D_ Josh types in response. _See you on Friday_

_its a date!_ Darryl says. _or is it? uh_

_yep, it’s a date_

Another smiley face, this one followed by an exclamation point. He can’t tell if that’s a typing mistake or possibly Darryl feeling as excited as he does. He types back an exclamation point of his own, then wishes Darryl a good night.

Later, the rest of the words to the song he's been humming come to him. It's not that he remembers them, exactly - in fact, he can't place if or where he's heard the song before. All he knows is that he feels like singing.


End file.
